Online and mobile social networking applications are known in the art. These applications are typically operated as managed services by application service providers (ASPs) and share several common characteristics. In particular, users typically create unique personal profiles that include basic information including identity, interests, profession, history, testimonials and information about their network. Users map their relationship with other members, either inviting other members to join their network (e.g., Friendster and LinkedIn), or by using software to scan existing relationships recorded in computer contact software (e.g., Spoke and Visible Path). Typically, connections are facilitated by sending messages (instant messages or emails) to friends who are already known or directly to people that are not known by the user. Other connections can be made through linking chains of existing relationships of people who may or may not be known to the user.
There are also mobile social networking applications known in the art. Most commonly, these applications provide such functions as friend-finding, text-dating and community message aggregation. Friend-finder applications (e.g., Dodgeball) announce connections in a user's “relationship map,” which can identify the location of the user or the friend. Such applications may also consult the relationship map and identify “friends of friends” who have announced they are within a certain range of the user's vicinity. Text-dating applications (e.g., MobiVibe) allow users to connect with new friends who meet age and gender criteria, enabling users to communicate, e.g., to exchange text messages. Community message aggregators (e.g., Upoc) distribute messages from one member to all members within a specific community. In an illustrative service, one member identifies a famous person or celebrity and a message about the person or celebrity is communicated to all community members.
Further, it is also known in the prior art to use online business people search engines to mine public sources of data, for instance the Internet's World Wide Web (WWW), for professional history information and contact details. The recruitment industry (e.g., Eliyon) typically uses such business professional databases to find candidates for job positions.
While these applications provide advantages, there remains a need in the art to provide more efficient techniques for enabling mobile device users to identify, locate and contact (e.g., be introduced to) like-minded people. The present invention addresses this need.